Here’s a chaotic and very average family animation from the Czech Republic, plasticky looking and blandly dubbed. It’s about a kid who brings the puppets in a dusty old museum to life and inadvertently resurrects the evil puppet-master, Bastor, who centuries ago armoured himself with bits of his creations.
Like Bastor, the movie feels Frankensteined from dozens of others you’ve already seen. What it lacks in originality it makes up for in hyperactive energy and a blathery message to boys about leadership. The moral to girls is more depressing, since Harvie’s female sidekick spends most of the movie looking scared and shouting: “Careful!”
Wilson Davis is the voice of Harvie, a rule-breaking scamp who stays up all night playing computer games while his disapproving dad works the graveyard shift at a puppet museum. Teacher’s pet Monica, who lives next door, is constantly chivvying Harvie to get off the computer and do his homework. But his gaming habit pays off when the pair become trapped in the museum and he gets his hands on an ancient remote control thingummy that operates the puppets.
Everything depends on Harvie. Does he have what it takes to halt Bastor’s megalomaniacal plot to turn the town into a giant puppet theatre? In a rare inventive flourish, Bastor rampages through the streets, magically turning houses into sets for his production. But mostly what you get here is a lot of head-spinning whizzing around as characters try to grab the remote control. It would leave no trace at all but for the irritating gender stereotypes: another wet-blanket girl character hammering home the cliche that boys are the risk-takers, while girls waggle their fingers and frown. I wouldn’t let a daughter of mine anywhere near it.
